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Clear Glass: Google's New 'Window To The Internet' Starts With No Ads And Free Services

Google released technical specifications for its forthcoming Glass product Monday, aimed at anyone who wants to develop third-party services for the wearable device. Among the notable guidelines, stated in bold on its terms of service, is that services for Glass must not include any advertisements or charge download fees.

There’s an echo here of how Google started off as a search engine in the mid-90′s, stripping out all the ad-supported portal features that Yahoo! and AOL had. Though that seemed counter-intuitive at the time, Google focused on letting people use its search tool without the diversion of ads, and for free. It went on to make billions by using features like AdWords and turning killer apps like Google Maps into subtle ad platforms.

We might see something similar with Glass and the services it will run, called Glassware.

Google has already started shipping Glass devices to developers and members of its early-bird Explorer program who have paid $1,500 a pop. It is expected to go on sale to the public in late 2013 for a lower price, offering standalone web services and working in tandem with existing apps on an Android phone.

Some have called Glass the world’s first “$1,500 browser” since Glass essentially acts like another window to the Internet, as venture capitalist and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen said recently. But in the long run, Google probably wants the user experience of Google Glass to be one free from monetary distractions.

The software interface for Glass is a type of web app called the Mirror API, and not a full-blown operating system like Android. When Glass owners put on the device, they choose which websites can post content to the “Timeline” projected in front of them. They visit a website on Glass and install Glassware from there. The developer then has permission to communicate with the device through the Google Cloud, using static, rectangular web pages called Cards, with images and text.

The question of how developers go on to make money from Glass may relate as easily to how people made money through Google’s original search engine. “They depend on Google’s magnanimity,” says Adib Carl Ghubril, an analyst with Gartner specializing in human-to-machine interfaces. “It depends on clicks and attracting someone to their site.”

Ads would be a “huge deterrent” to Google Glass, Ghubril says. “The whole point of Google Glass is it’s supposed to be part of your everyday movements. It’s supposed to disappear.” What Glass will crucially bring to vendors — which will include the likes of Amazon, Starbucks and WalMart — is helpful contextual data on their users, twinning things like time, personal preference and location data.

“Say it’s lunch time and you decide to go out for a walk,” says Ghubril. “Google knows what time it is and where you are. It also knows your consuming behaviour online so vendors have access to that through the cloud. Say there’s a shop around the corner that sells Belgian chocolates and it knows you like chocolate, and that you’re a block away.” In that moment it could send you a notification.

One complication on that front: Right now it is not possible to send push notifications through web based services on mobile devices, which are written in the standard known as HTML5. But some say notifications are on their way once standards bodies push it hard enough. Last week, a social messaging app called Kik announced that an a HTML5-based web app platform it had created on top of its texting service could now send push notifications.

Though it is early to predict how brands and developers will make money through Glassware, one route might be through location-based push notifications on Glass’s Timeline Cards. It could also be through something impossible to determine today because the concept is so new and untested.

It is unclear if Google will maintain its mandate on “free services” in the long term, though judging by how it has turned a free tool like Google Search into a complex and powerful business model, it probably will.

The broader question is what free, web-based services on wearable devices like Google Glass will do for the traditional app economy maintained by Apple and Google’s operating system, Android. Will mass adoption of a web-based device like Glass help erode their power?

A few signs already point to the walled gardens of native apps being at risk: there is the looming release of a handful of open web mobile platforms coming this year and next (Firefox OS, Tizen, Sailfish and Ubuntu).

Then there is Apple’s almost desperate-looking attempt to protect the gateway to its app marketplace, the App Store, by last week shutting down the popular app discovery service AppGratis. The company is reportedly poised to target other similar third-party services in the coming weeks. Apple derives a single-digit proportion of group revenues directly from App Store downloads, but the store is a key symbol for the financial health of its iOS ecosystem.

One of the biggest strengths of Google’s mobile operating system, Android, has been its permissiveness. Since the open-source platform was first unveiled in 2007, Google has let developers, device makers and wireless carriers, and more recently evenFacebook, modify the platform to suit their business interests. This is one of the big reasons Android continues to grow so rapidly around the world.

Google Glass’ terms suggest it is not so open when it comes to distribution. For instance, Google will ban developers from distributing their client software outside of the Google Mirror API Client distribution channel for Glass.

It may simply be that in the case of Google Glass, the restrictions will be greater on the developers and less so (money-wise at least) on the user.

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